Mickadeit: Car guy drives in a sweet, rare circle

After a frantic week of searching, Frank Mickadeit ended up with a car he knew: a Saab. FRANK MICKADEIT, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

The only good part about somebody totaling your car is that you have to buy a new one. Car guys are always looking for that next car. And a wreck that isn’t your fault feels like the other guy is paying for it.

I was thinking about waiting until the OC Auto Show in a couple of weeks and spending time speed dating with a lot of prospective mates, but when you are in a $25-a-day Chevy Cruze rental, the pressure is on. Especially if that rental is a Chevy Cruze. (OK, I eventually warmed to the Cruze, which was surprisingly solid, but still more Chevette than Corvette.)

Here was the problem: I had no idea – I mean none – what I wanted. My wrecked car, a 2005 Jaguar XKR, was a rare black beauty with fluid, unmistakable lines, and virtually irreplaceable at a price I could afford. Plus, I’d already run my course with the Jag, which, as a girlfriend once told me, was the kind of car a gynecologist would drive.

But as to what to replace it with, I had no compass whatsoever. New or used, car or truck – I was all over the map. For days, I stayed on the Internet until 2 a.m., prowling Auto Trader, eBay and dealers’ sites for F-150s, Lexus IS250s and RX350s, Infiniti Gs, BMW 3s and Audi 4s. I scanned our ads for Ford Fusions, Kia Optimas and Honda CR-Vs. There was even a brief flirtation with Mercedes, but there are people I went to college with whom I couldn’t look in the eye if I ever drove up in something with a star on the grill.

I bought a one-month online subscription to Consumer Reports and ran data. I bought the latest issues of Motor Trend, Car and Driver, Road & Track and Automobile. I stole the Autoweek from my buddy Stan’s mail. I never went on a car lot, though. I’m a soft touch. If a salesperson spends 30 minutes with me, I can’t walk away.

Of course, I had to feed my Porsche 911 and the VW bus obsessions.

A new 911 was way out of my price range. But I dropped in on my former Porsche wrench, Chris Miller at Newport Motorsports, and had a long heart-to-heart about what was out there in the used 911 market. After that and much more research, it came down to either a 911 made between ’95 and ’97 or between ’05 and ’06. Each was just on the outer edge of my out-the-door budget.

But the ‘95-97’s (the last air-cooled 911 and in some purists’ minds the last true 911) are very hard to find – and they are targets. Two were recently stolen in Laguna. I was scared away from the ’05-‘07’s by a lot of 911-forum chatter about a 5-10 percent chance of a catastrophic engine failure in those due to something called an IMS bearing. A $20,000 fix.

VW Westfalias? I need dependability, so it was going to have to be something first built in the late ‘80s and rebuilt recently by someone with a rock-solid rep. The Central Coast Westy guys I used to deal with were selling a restored ’87 for $69,000. At that price, I’d have to live in it too, although maybe I could get a home loan.

Anyway, after days of study, it was late Friday night. I knew I was going to buy a car over the weekend. I’d written down some lightly used Lexi I’d planned to visit the next day at a dealership, which I knew was as good as buying one. It was a practical choice. Even if it meant a car payment, my insurance and repair bills would drop. After a Jag, anything but a Learjet is cheaper in that regard.

But before I logged off on Friday night – or actually, early Saturday morning – I thought, Well, as long as I’m considering cars I used to own, why not see whether anyone is selling the car I had before I got the gyno staff car? That was another rarity – a Saab 9-5 Aero wagon I’d bought from John Campbell.

Saab doesn’t even exist any more. If I wanted something you didn’t see every day, I couldn’t do better. I’d sold the one I had to a guy who put it in a cargo container shipped it to a waiting buyer in Japan. Now, on Friday night, there was exactly one within driving distance. It felt right. I wrote down the phone number. I slept on it. The next morning it still felt right.

Around noon Saturday I drove up to Sherman Oaks. It was like she was waiting for me: another rare black beauty with its own unmistakable lines. I passed hundreds and hundreds of cars driving her home. Didn’t see a single other Saab.

Mickadeit writes Mon.-Fri. Contact him at 714-796-4994 or fmickadeit@ocregister.com

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